cgwilt11-blog

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I'm Graduating

I want to thank my sister for waiting for me to print out my edited project in the early mornings, sometimes making us late for school. I want to thank my dad for leaving me alone and not stressing me out while I was working on the project. I want to thank my mom cause she is awesome. I want to thank my brother for pulling all nighters with me when I had a lot of things to change. I want to thank Kreinbring for reading through my project and giving me check marks to increase my self esteem. Lastly, I want to thank myself for not leaving everything to the last minute and avoiding a panic attack. I am officially graduating in 22 minutes and I couldn’t be happier. The suffering is over, it’s time to have fun!

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Metafiction

If I had the opportunity to take a fictional character to prom, I would take Tayo. Now, I don't want to take Tayo so I can assimilate him into white culture, I just think the kid really needs a night to have fun. He's had a rough life living on the reservation with not a lot of financial support (so of course I would pay for his ticket) and not a lot of love (I would be his best friend and after prom we would hang out and stuff). I want to be Tayo's friend, so instead of picking a character that I am in love with, I would want to take the character I believe is most deserving of a night out with a bunch of really loud and awkward high school seniors like my fellow AP Lit students. TAYO WILL YOU GO TO PROM WITH ME??? PS This was a great opportunity for a promposal, I'm disappointed in all of you right now.

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Criticism inception! I really liked reading my criticisms actually, they were really interesting. But writing about them was a whole different story!

Criticisms on Anna Karenina

I am actually understanding my criticisms really well! I’m surprised because I thought the language was going to be too hard to understand. My only concern is that my criticisms reference other criticisms which i don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe I will try and find the criticisms mentioned in my criticisms and continue from there.

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I've been trying to annotate my passages, and I just started writing about them a week after I actually went through them. I don't know if they are the passages that I am going to end up with because I have some others in mind but we will see!

Research/ Writing #3

I am in the middle of writing my first annotation, and it sucks. I have had the passages picked out for a week now, but I have been putting off writing the actual annotation. After annotating  my first passage, I gained a lot of ideas, but now my problem is putting it together. Right now I have the first paragraph done, and four paragraphs started. I have not figured out how to organize all of my ideas and connect them in a way that flows. My plan is to get as far as I can and then show Krienbring on Monday. Hopefully this will give me more direction. 

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This is honestly me like every day. Today, while I was at softball practice, all I could think about was how much I would rather do my lit project. However, when I got home, all I wanted to do was sleep. I'm confusing myself with what I want to do, because not having it done is stressing me out but I don't have the motivation to finish it.

Research/Writing

I have no idea how to even start writing this thing. I have a blank word document open and minimized. Every time I open it, I stare at the white screen and then remember the more important things in my life like Pinterest and my refrigerator. I have very little motivation to do this project. I can feel the pressure building up. This project is as irritating as a mosquito bite in the middle of your back and no matter how far you stretch, for the life of you, you can’t reach it. So instead you distract yourself just like I am doing now. Really I could have been done with a lot by this time but instead I am ranting on Tumblr and making weird analogies/similes. Although…this feels a little productive because it is part of the assignment. That means I deserve another 50 minute break.

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Background Sources or Death? Research 4

Background sources for Homer are like trying to find a needle in the whole of Canada. I first tried looking to see if some super expert who devoted his life to researching Homer had found something about who influenced him. But alas, how could I have been so dumb, because how can one find influences on a person that no one knows if they actually existed or not. So I tried looking for values of this society, but almost everything that I found had something to do with Homer's two epics, and this was a recurring theme. Since Homer is one of the first people to actually write down these stories, he has inspired everyone else but no one knows what could have inspired him. So I went in and talked to Mr. Kreinbring about what he expected my background sources to look like. We scoured the web for things that could be connected to Homer, and decided that the best way to go about this was to find articles about how life functioned in Ancient Greece and things about the oral tradition which carried the stories that Homer wrote down. It's hard to find these things, but I'm just gonna keep trucking and see what else I can find.

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Research Part 3

I have finished two of my abstracts, though I don't really know if they are good or not. I'm definitely going to have to talk to Kreinbring about what exactly is good to have in it and what is okay to leave out. I am currently just writing summaries of the criticisms that I have and including some of the information mentioned in our packet. I find it really interesting to read the criticisms, because I'm really interested in what these people have to say. They have dedicated a portion of their life to researching my book, and I think it's cool to be able to look at The Odyssey in a different way that makes me love the crafting of the story as much as I love the story. However, I'm not really sure if I'm doing it right (because usually I'm not when it comes to writing). Hoping and praying that our humble instructor can help me on my mythical quest so I can go to college and get a job someday. Because Lit is the only class I need to pass to graduate. Live, Love, Literature.

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So I began to read my criticisms and was greeted with a great surprise. This particular criticism is basically half in Greek. So I don't think that I will be able to use this one in particular (thank the lord I have an extra book). I thought maybe I could figure out what it was trying to say without being able to read these words, but the criticism is about Homer's vocabulary, and since Homer originally wrote it in ancient Greek, there was bound to be a lot of Greek. Needless to say, I will be moving past this book. I'm going to be looking at the narrative pattern, the book's shape and character, and the importance of disguises in the book. Ready or not, here I go.

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We don't get a singer like Mariah Carey without singers like Aretha Franklin. Mariah's big voice wouldn't even be noticed unless Aretha had trail blazed a way for her to be successful in the music business. Aretha's range and big voice created a niche in the music business where Mariah's voice could fit in, along with Whitney Houston. Without black women to break into the business before her, Mariah's talents light have gone unappreciated by popular culture. But thanks to amazing talents like Aretha Franklin and Billie Holiday, Mariah was able to break into the music business and gives us some pretty amazing Christmas music.

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I love how she speaks! It definitely puts you right into the place where Hurston wants you. I can see myself sitting in a room with people in the south speaking with their accents. To me, I liked it because it's so much more authentic than giving them Michigan accents which is typically what I hear in my head with normally spelled dialogue.

I really love the book so far. Like most people, I struggled with reading the dialogue at first. But now that I’ve gotten used to it and no longer have to read through the dialogue really slowly to understand it, I love the way she talks. Switching back and forth between the dialogue and the...

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Coming from the perspective of knowing the ending, this connection is awesome! I never thought of it that way before, but she definitely does get closer to nature when her dreams are seemingly closer to coming true/came true. In chapter 2, she connects her dream of love to nature when she talks about how she wants a man to sit under a pear tree with her and think. Nature and Janie's dreams are definitely connected. Cool idea Gab!

I’m very impressed with this book so far. I love the two narrative styles I think it gives us the perfect amount of perspective. One thing that really stood out for me was Janie’s connection to nature. She looks and watches nature and she learns things about the world and herself. Janie describes...

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The first time I read it, I did the same thing! Dialogue looked like someone smashed their head on the keyboard and said "eh, pretty good". For a whole chapter, I actually wrote over the dialogue with the correctly spelled word. I would change "Ah" to "I", and that really helped me. After that, I found reading the dialogue so much easier, just because I knew what they were trying to say.

As a reader, I really had to immerse myself in the book before I started to like it. I would skim over the dialogue because I was having a hard time reading it, but once I realized the whole book was like that, I went back and reread and it turned out I kinda love it. The use of the different...

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Ahh! I wish I could come, but I have to babysit until 6:30. Gosh dangit.

I wanted to share with you all possibly the best panorama I have ever taken. Court Mort and I went to the OU Library today and it was one of the most frustrating experiences ever. Our librarian was decently helpful, but it wasn’t anything like the other stories people have been telling. But we found some books and some online articles relating to our books. We printed out the articles and found our books pretty easily. However, when we tried to check out our books, I didn’t have my library card and Courtney’s wouldn’t work. So we had to settle for only our online pieces and now I have to go back to check out my books when I get my library card. But going to the library and not being able to check anything out was really annoying. I’m probably going back later today to get them. I’ll keep you all posted since I know how interested you are in my adventures on this mythical quest to get an A in lit.

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Chapters 1-5 Their Eyes Were Watching God Harkness

For me, rereading the chapters 1-5 was really a fun experience. Since I've already read this book, it was interesting to go back and see what I missed the first time I read it. It was interesting to read through the lens of reoccurring motifs like the trees and the mules. I really love this story so I was really glad that we were going to read it in class. Janie's struggle of wanting to be loved but also wanting to be independent really speaks to me because as a woman, there is a delicate balance to loving someone but also being strong and independent. It was also funny to me to see all my friends and peers struggle with the language in the book. The way that Hurston spells in the dialogue is very specific in the culture that she is representing. I actually like the way the dialogue is presented. It makes it easier for me to become immersed in the story and culture as well as to better understand the culture and time period that this story is set in/written in.

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I found a similar sight when looking for my criticisms on the Odyssey. There were two shelves holding just criticisms on the Odyssey, and they focused on a wide range of topics, but mostly focusing on the narration as well as the literary techniques. It was hard to narrow down which ones would be the best suited for this project. I found some but as I blogged before, I am currently unable to get them for reasons that are completely frustrating as well as out of my control (LIKE THE FACT THAT I LIVE IN TROY AND THEY DONT TAKE TROY LIBRARY CARDS!!?!?!!) But yeah, I'm pretty happy with my book choice because it gave me a good selection of criticisms to help me.

This photo was from a couple weeks ago when I journeyed to the OU Library with Allison. At first I found the place to be a bit…overwhelming. I’ve never actually used a university library before, although I’ve been in a few. I found the librarian at the research help desk to be extremely helpful. Without her finding my criticisms would’ve been like finding a needle in a haystack since I’m totally unfamiliar with the university library organization system. Not only was the librarian helpful but she was also friendly! She was understanding of my limited knowledge of how to use a find things in a library and was kind enough to show Allison and I to where our criticisms were located. Now, I was expecting a lot of criticism on Paradise Lost, but what I found blew me away. I had two entire sections of bookshelf reserved for critical works specifically related to Paradise Lost, and there was another two bookshelf sections on Milton in general. There were criticism books ranging from overarching themes to entire books that only focused on the literary devices used in one specific book of Paradise Lost. Narrowing this vast collection down took a long time, but eventually I was able to find two criticisms that were broad enough for me to employ effectively into my project and research. Unfortunately this probably means I’m going to end up reading through a majority of both of these books in order to understand what they’re explaining. In any case, I’m glad to have found my books, and I’ll definitely be more comfortable next time I’m in the library. I’m also grateful that I went with Allison since I used her library card to check out my books.

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I wanted to share with you all possibly the best panorama I have ever taken. Court Mort and I went to the OU Library today and it was one of the most frustrating experiences ever. Our librarian was decently helpful, but it wasn't anything like the other stories people have been telling. But we found some books and some online articles relating to our books. We printed out the articles and found our books pretty easily. However, when we tried to check out our books, I didn't have my library card and Courtney's wouldn't work. So we had to settle for only our online pieces and now I have to go back to check out my books when I get my library card. But going to the library and not being able to check anything out was really annoying. I'm probably going back later today to get them. I'll keep you all posted since I know how interested you are in my adventures on this mythical quest to get an A in lit.

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Oh yeah definitely. For the first sixth of the book a bunch of names were thrown around and I had to look them up constantly. My sister is a fan of the Percy Jackson series so she has made herself familiar with a lot of Greek mythology and I think that helped me a lot since she talks about it so much. But it was so hard to keep every name straight because I can’t pronounce any of them in my head. The footnotes in my book helped a lot though, because they would tell me what certain gods were in charge of or what relevance a certain island or group of people had.

Books 9-12 focus on Odysseus’ journey between the end of the Iliad and where the Odyssey picks back up. This is the important information that I was missing at the beginning which made it hard to understand where I was and what was going on. These stories definitely cleared things up...